


Inevitable Things

by liriodendron



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, Parentlock, Romance, Same-Sex Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-29
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-24 23:48:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/946138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liriodendron/pseuds/liriodendron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock tenses momentarily, then composes himself enough to turn away from his microscope and regard John coolly. “John, I’m working. And why are you whispering?”</p><p>“Sherlock, there is a boy downstairs.” John’s face is grave, his brow furrowed.</p><p>“What, a child just wandered in off the street? That is unexpected. Does he have a case?” Sherlock looks perversely excited by the prospect, but John shakes his head wearily, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers.</p><p>“No, you don’t understand. There is a boy downstairs with our daughter.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inevitable Things

“Sherlock. Sherlock!” John hisses through the doorway to Sherlock’s laboratory. The man in question fails to so much as twitch in response, so John tries again, this time crossing the room and putting his face no more than twelve inches from his husband’s. “ _Sherlock!”_ he barks in a stage whisper.

Sherlock tenses momentarily, then composes himself enough to turn away from his microscope and regard John coolly. “John, I’m working. And why are you whispering?”

“Sherlock, there is a _boy_ downstairs.” John’s face is grave, his brow furrowed.

“What, a child just wandered in off the street? That is unexpected. Does he have a case?” Sherlock looks perversely excited by the prospect, but John shakes his head wearily, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers.

“No, you don’t understand. There is a boy downstairs _with_ _our daughter_.”

“Oh, is that all?” Sherlock turns back to his microscope. “Isn’t there usually? Really, John, I’m beginning to worry about you.”

It’s true, John has to admit. Tess’s prickly intelligence and devastating wit, combined with her enthusiasm for all things grotesque and morbid, has never done much to win her female friends. But it endears her greatly to a certain sort of geeky and bookish young man, of which she tends to have several constantly in her orbit. But that’s not what’s currently making John’s throat constrict with dread.

John makes a noise of utter frustration and shoves the microscope halfway across the table, forcing Sherlock’s annoyed attention back to him. “No, no, no. This, this is different. This is just one boy. A _boy_ boy. It’s that twerp from two doors down. I said he’d be trouble the day they moved in, didn’t I say it? And now she wants to go out with him. Alone, on a _date_. Sherlock,” he pleads, “they are _holding hands_ ….on our bloody sofa! What are we going do?”

Sherlock gives John a look of calm surprise. “We let her go, of course.”

“Are you insane?”

Sherlock tilts his head. “It seems perfectly logical to me, John. She’s sixteen—”

“Four days, Sherlock, she’s only been sixteen for four days!” John’s voice is rising now, moving from agitated to almost panicked. He starts pacing in a tight radius around Sherlock’s lab bench, running his hand anxiously through his silver-streaked hair. Sherlock watches him with undisguised fascination.

“Nevertheless. I believe this is considered a customary and healthy age for maturing teenagers to begin experimenting with dating and sexual activity—”

John stops dead in his tracks and literally chokes, coughing uncontrollably while Sherlock forges on.

“This appears to be an ideal scenario for a foray into the dating world. We know the boy and his parents, he presents no physical threat, and Tess is versed in upwards of 150 ways to disable or kill an individual who might attempt to persuade her to do something against her… What’s wrong, why is your face like that?”

John, now devoid of all colour, waves a hand wildly at him. “No, stop, just stop.” He coughs one more time and then dashes to the desk in the corner, piled high with papers, and begins rummaging madly through the drawers. “That’s it, I am getting my gun.”

Sherlock stands and approaches him cautiously, as one might approach a large and rabid mountain lion. “John, be reasonable…”

John spins to face him, furious. “You’re talking about sex and our baby girl in the same sentence and you’re asking me to be _reasonable_?”

“It’s just biology. Everyone does it eventually.”

“Right. Right.” John is practically shaking with rage. “No big deal. And I suppose you think that when we—”

“That’s entirely different,” Sherlock cuts in smoothly. “The physical act enhances the existing bond of affection. But you of all people know that isn’t always, or even often, the case. Don’t change the subject.”

John looks at Sherlock like his spouse has sprouted tentacles out of his forehead.

“What on earth is wrong with you?” he explodes. “You’re the most possessive, overprotective man I’ve ever met and you’re talking about Tess dating as if it was no more of a concern than her getting new ice skates. In fact, if I recall, when she did actually get new ice skates you forbade her to use them unless she was swathed in bubble wrap! For Christ sake’s, you nearly drove the poor surrogate to madness when she was carrying her. You monitored what she ate, what she drank, how much she slept, you forced her to listen to science textbooks on tape, practically dogged her around the city whenever she went out. But now, our actual child wants to traipse around London unsupervised doing God knows what with God knows whom, and you’re… fine… with this?”

“All that was in the contract, it’s not my fault if the woman didn’t read it thoroughly,” Sherlock responds mildly. “Foetal development is an extremely sensitive time. But there’s minimal risk here, she has all the pertinent biological and medical safety information, she’s very mature, and from what I understand this sort of thing is rather inevitable.”

“Minimal risk?” John is aghast. “Leaving aside the fact that all I was originally worried about was a basic film-and-chips first date and you’ve managed to upgrade it to defcon six, sex and _our daughter_ … Leaving that incredibly horrifying turn of conversation... do you know what could _happen_ to her?”

Sherlock sniffs. “Since when are you so concerned about virtue, John? What age did you start at, again? Bit of a double standard there.”

“It’s not her virtue I’m worried about,” John snarls.

Sherlock raises one eloquent eyebrow at him.

“Oh, fine I am that too, but only because yes, exactly, I was that age once and I know what he’s thinking and it,” he gestures graphically in the vague direction of the downstairs, “is _disgusting_.”

Sherlock does blanch a bit at this, but otherwise maintains his composure staunchly.

John continues. “What I’m really worried about is her heart.”

A pause. “Her… heart?” Sherlock whispers at last, as if this had not occurred to him before. He rallies. “Well, provided she doesn’t get too attached…”

John shakes his head heavily, righteous anger and vitriol gone out of him now. He leans back against the desk, deflated. “She’s already attached. She’s a sixteen year old girl, Sherlock. For all that she’s like you, she feels _everything_ , keenly. Too keenly. You know she does. Remember the lab rat incident? She cried for weeks.” He sighs. “It doesn’t even matter if we let them date or not, it’s too late. Her heart is going to get broken. If not now, then soon enough.”

Sherlock blinks at John and swallows dryly, moving nearer to the doctor. “My heart was broken once,” he murmurs, as if he is speaking from a long way off.

John takes Sherlock’s scarred and bony hands and puts them to his lips, knowing instantly where the other man has gone, remembering those painful years when they had hurt each other so deeply in turn. “So was mine.”

“It was… It made me…” Sherlock struggles for the words and looks helplessly at John.

John draws his husband to him, encircling Sherlock’s waist with his arms and feeling the still-lithe body quiver ever so slightly, even now, from the memory. “Shh, I know. Me too. But that was a long time ago and we’ve had so many good years since then.”

“If we could do that to each other, even after everything we had together…”

“I know.”

“There are people out there who won’t care about her at all.”

“Yes.”

“We can’t… can’t we prevent it? There must be a way.”

John lets out a long breath. “No, love, I don’t think so. We all have to go through it, often many times.”

“But she’s so…” Sherlock trails off, leaving John to fill in the blanks. _Innocent. Young. Perfect. Beautiful._

“Yeah, she is.”

Sherlock looks suddenly aged, defeated by this blow in a way John has rarely seen him. “She won’t be just ours anymore, will she?”

John reaches up and smears a thumb along the knife edge of Sherlock’s cheekbone, smooth and untouched by the wrinkles that crowd his eyes and mouth. “Now you see what I was so upset about. But I suppose it can’t be helped. She has to grow up eventually and that means there are going to be boys. Probably more than just this one. She can’t just rattle around this house with us old sods forever.”

“Why not?” demands Sherlock, but without conviction.

But then something hardens in his face and the glint returns to his eyes. He reaches into his pocket and produces John’s missing pistol. “Well, the least we can do is make it difficult for the little vermin.” He thunders out into the hall and bellows over the railing. “Tesla Estelle Holmes-Watson you get up here _right this instant_. You, _boy_! Don’t go anywhere.”

John grins wickedly, despite the usual urge to cringe at their daughter’s full moniker. He reminds himself to be grateful they were able to compromise on something that at least shortened to a social acceptable diminutive, even if the namesake had been undeniably mad, and that he had managed to get his mother’s name in there. Sherlock had originally tried to name her after his favourite poison and element of the periodic table. There wasn’t a lot you could do with Digitalis Antimony, nickname-wise.  

A slim, slight figure appears in the doorway. “Yes, Father?” Tess asks with studied innocence.

“Sit down,” snaps Sherlock. “Your Papa and I have something to say to you.” He clears his throat, and gives John a little shove forward. “Well, go ahead, John.”

John looks down into the heart-shaped face, soft and snub-nosed, framed by wild obsidian curls. Her very earnest attempt to appear obedient and submissive is belied by the current of nervous excitement she can’t quite disguise and a slight upturning at the corners of her mouth that speaks to nothing so much as Sherlock when he’s plotting something.  “Um… well…” She blinks up at him sweetly from under dark lashes and he melts. “We’ve decided…that… you may go out with Trevor. But there are going to be some rules.”

“Lots of rules,” Sherlock adds grimly, arms crossed and pistol still in hand. “And possibly some target practice.”

 

 


End file.
